Breakdown of Military Flights Through Shannon and Irish Airspace in 2017

Tue, 13/03/2018 - 00:51 by shannonwatch

For a foreign military aircraft to land at an Irish airport or even to pass through Irish airspace, permission must be granted by the Minister for Foreign Affairs. In 2017 his department received 515 requests for landings by military aircraft at airports in Ireland. Of the 515 landing requests received, 1 was refused and 15 were cancelled. The vast majority of these (451) were for military aircraft landing at Shannon Airport.

Of the 451 military aircraft landings at Shannon in 2017, 402 were US military aircraft.

These flights are in addition to 334 US military contracted flights with personal weapons of troops on board that landed at Shannonin 2017.

The full breakdown of military landings at Irish airports in 2017 is as follows:

As can been seen, 3 US military aircraft landed as Casement Airport. These are in addition to the 402 that landed at Shannon.

A much larger number of military aircraft, mostly from the US, pass through Irish airspace. During 2017, there were 1,749 overflights of Irish airspace by military aircraft. Of these 1420 (81%) were US military planes.

In other words, almost 4 US military aircraft pass through Irish airspace every day.

The full breakdown is as follows:

There were a further 540 overflights of aircraft in Irish airspace with munitions on board.

This information was provided by the Minister for Foreign Affairs in respose to a parliamentary question from Clare Daly TD.